Null
by The FiboNACHi Sequence
Summary: She thought she was the only one who got it. He went through similar but different. Both of them know what it's like to fight for survival and neither of them are willing to yield. So who will finally give more than zero? RenegonShepard/Jack.


**Commander Shepard Service Profile:**

_Lynx Shepard_

_Adept (Ex-Sniper/Vanguard)_

_Colonist_

_War Hero_

_Renegon_

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own any of the characters of Mass Effect, or any Bioware-related articles of any kind. This is pure fanfiction and written with fanlove._

* * *

Chapter One: Somewhat Damaged

_Cold. Frozen. Caged._

The first thing she heard was the release of the gas locks and a mechanical whirr, foreign and almost painful to her ears. She would call it discomfort except she knew there were worse things in the world than the pure silence of cryogenic sleep. A sensation of being lifted that was controlled and gentle like a mother with a newborn babe surrounded her.

_Ice. Steel._

She could feel the metal at her back, the cold bite of the restraints around her wrists. Her body burned with frost, eyes held closed by the accumulation of ice on her lashes. She could feel every inch of her skin, from shaven head, past colourful skin to the heavy boots on her feet. Gently, she twitched her fingers, checking to see if she was still alive. At her wrists, she could feel the muscle flex against the bone and the skin press against the metal surface.

_Cold Brittle Steel._

Jack wasn't accustomed to staying inside restraints. Already, she could feel the fire of violence building in her body. That impulse to do harm that, when fulfilled, was more satisfying than the best high. Her eyes shot open and she exhaled, expelling cold air from deep inside her body.

_Brittle Steel._

Three large mechs stood in front of her, turrets and missile launchers focussed on her being. She didn't care. A familiar mantra had begun, three impulses repeating over and over in her mind,

_Escape. Kill. Survive._

She tugged her arms free from the restraints, the metal as brittle and fragile as glass against her enhanced strength. With rage, she ripped her neck brace open and fell forwards onto her feet. The mechs, obviously programmed to take her down in such a case, began to raise their arms.

She didn't think. Didn't pause to wonder if she was well enough to attempt a feat of biotics. Animalistic instinct took over and she let her senses flow out into her body, skin tingling as a barrier of pure biotic power formed. Then around both her hands, waves of energy began to form and she launched herself at the middle mech with a roar. Nobody would ever dare to tell Subject Zero that trying to take down a heavy FENRIS mech with bare hands was impossible. Her response would probably have involved a mocking laugh, a flow of biotic power and an untimely violent death.

Her fist shattered the head of the mech, the wires sparking and shorting each other in the wake of her blow. The destroyed machine began to make a desperate sound, a constant beep that warned of imminent explosion. Jack ignored it and with another roar continued on, throwing out her biotics in any direction, so long as there was a mech or mercenary willing to be thrown against the wall with lethal force. She ran along a walkway and found a likely recipient of her rage. One blue-armoured guard had aimed his assault rifle at her and was trying to empty the clip into her exposed torso. She ducked and ran, the bullets shattered ineffectually against her barrier, as she closed the gap before he could reload.

With one hand, she used pull to levitate him, before throwing his body against a stack of heavy storage crates. The impact was sickening, with her pure rage causing his now limp body to smash into the crates at lethal force. There was the audible snap of bones on impact, each sound increasing Jack's want for violence. She lifted him again and threw a biotic punch at him, his lifeless corpse hitting another guard with enough power to knock them both off the walkway.

A flood of pure euphoria fuelled Jack's body, running through her veins and down her spine. She fought back a moan of bliss, as well as the urge to arch her back and let the sensations wash over her. Oh yes. She'd missed that feeling.

"It's been too long," she muttered, before curling her lips in a snarl and hurling her body down the hallway that lead to the docking bay.

* * *

Jack skidded along her side, dodging another hail of bullets. Some idiot turian guard had commanded her to stop, while his more intelligent batarian friend had decided it was better to kill the crazy psycho bitch than to order her around. In her still half-wild mind, she decided that the batarian had to go first. With relish, she came to her feet and lifted the merc up, before hitting him in the chest with a biotic-covered fist. She felt his hardened armour crack underneath the force and he slammed into the wall, ribs crushed. His turian companion deserved no such artistic treatment, a simple throw of dangerous power turning him into a boneless bag of flesh, with the lethal impact of his back against the wall.

As soon as she'd killed both, she'd regretted not taking her time. The rush of euphoria and adrenaline was fading fast, leaving her frustrated. There was so much more she wanted to do to the mercs on Purgatory, so many more ways she wanted to grind their bodies into bloodless, fleshy bags, punishment for being the authoritarian bastards that decided that keeping her locked up was a good idea. Looking around, Jack waited for more, snarling and growling until the frigate linked to the docking bay caught her eye, or rather, the iconic symbol on the side of its nose.

"Cerberus." The word was spat, poisonously. Jack was overcome with inarticulate rage. What the fuck was Cerberus doing on the station? Were they coming to get her? Take her back? Do more fucked-up experiments to her mind? She was stronger now. More wild. More dangerous. She'd like to see them try. Jack began to pace, hands shaped into claws, ready to throw her enemies around the room, ready to show Cerberus Dogs what happened to them when they try to take back their little psycho play-things. She began to growl and clench her teeth, waiting, just wanting, eyes completely focussed on that hateful symbol in front of her…

She didn't even know the guard was sneaking up behind her until he was shot in the head. Spinning around, body tensing for a fight, she came face to face with the muzzle of a heavy pistol. She then looked past it and into the eyes of the man who decided it was a good idea to point a gun at someone willing to flay him alive with her bare hands.

The first thing she noticed was glowing orange eyes with heavy black bags under them. The left side of his face was a mass of lesions that revealed orange cybernetic wiring. His jaw and cheeks were completely unshaven and his black hair fell messily onto his forehead. He looked like he was very handsome before the scarring, with pale skin and broad cheekbones, a nicely curved nose and slanted brows.

But the eyes...

They were inhuman and completely merciless. This wasn't the kind of man who would shoot first and ask questions later. This was the kind of man who never asked any questions at all. Some part of her wondered what colour his eyes were before the orange.

She quickly took in the black armour, highlighted with a deep, red and the blue visor hiding one of the orange eyes, before once more returning to the gun held in those hands. The man suddenly lifted the weapon and compressed it, placing it back at his side. He stared at her, waiting to see what her next move was. Her eyes caught the symbol N7 on the chest of his armour, and something tugged at her mind, some memory of what N7 was and who was a member of it, before she shoved the thought away to replace it with survivalist instinct.

An age seemed to pass, although it could only have been a second. There was something about his gaze that sent shivers down her spine. She couldn't decided if they were shivers of fear or shivers of excitement at an opponent who would finally be a challenge. She noticed his companions, a turian with damaged heavy blue armour and a dark-skinned human. The turian stood at ease, rather relaxed for someone who had half their face covered in bandages. The dark-skinned human who stared at her with open mistrust had one hand behind him on his shotgun, ready to take the shot if needed. She growled with distaste.

And then she noticed that the dark-skinned man bore the Cerberus logo on the chest of his uniform and all thought of curiosity went out of her mind to be replaced with murderous impulses. Jack inwardly sighed. The man with the orange eyes was kinda sexy in a very dangerous, cold-blooded, blow-out-the-brains-of-the-guard-sneaking-up-behind-you way. It was such a shame she was going to have to kill him.

She let the biotics flow out into her limbs. The orange-eyed stranger didn't flinch, just watched, although the dark-skinned jumpy one pulled out his shotgun. The turian reached over and pressed the barrel down, shaking his head at the human in either disapproval or command. Jack, for the first time in a long time, paused. The stranger fixed her with a demonic stare, before smirking slightly in a sardonic expression.

"So, go on then. Obviously you've got some kinks you need to work out of your system before we can start talking." His voice was hoarse and deep, tone as mocking as the slight curve of his lips.

"What the hell do you want?" Jack demanded. Maybe she should have killed him.

"I just saved your ass," the man retorted, gesturing to the dead guard. He didn't seem too upset at her rudeness, although his smirk disappeared.

"He was already dead, he just didn't know it. Now, what the hell do you want?"

"I'm Lynx Shepard. Some three-headed-dog told me you're the go-to girl for crazy biotics and psychotic violence, so I figured I'd come and see what all the fuss was about." He glanced at the dead guards lying around in contorted piles of broken bones, blood pooling from the broken seals in their armour.

"Seems like they weren't mistaken. Who knew Cerberus would actually be right about something for once?"

Strangely enough, Jack wanted to laugh at his statement. His deadpan tone showed that he had no fondness for Cerberus. Still, she wouldn't be lead into another trap. She wasn't a sucker, no matter how tempting the bait was. And tempting he was, especially since the violence and lust fighting it out in her mind were too close to call.

"I'm not going anywhere with you. You're Cerberus."

"Technically, he's Cerberus," Lynx retorted, jerking a thumb at his human companion, who sneered. "And he's working for me at the moment."

"With them. For them. I don't care."

He quirked an eyebrow.

"Actually, grammatically, they're quite different so maybe you should."

Jack couldn't take anymore. Her skin began to feel like it was on fire. She wanted to kill something or run.

"You show up in a Cerberus Frigate to take me away somewhere. You think I'm stupid?"

The turian's mandibles flared with his version of a hidden grin, blue eyes filling with mirth. The wounds on the side of his face, while fresh, didn't seem to impede his ability to make expressions.

"Permission to say 'yes' in response to that, Shepard? This ship is crashing, after all."

Lynx's scarred eyebrows rose. Jack couldn't help but focus on his eyes more than anywhere else. It was almost as if his entire face was a mask, covering a burning demon on the inside.

"I don't know, Garrus. We don't want to inflame the beautiful, powerful psychotic."

Beautiful?

That was it.

"If you won't be fucking straight up with me, then I'm going to fucking tear you apart right now!"

Her arms glowed with blue strength as she activated her barrier. She began to pull her arms back in preparation for a shockwave as the dark-skinned Cerberus soldier once again pulled out his shotgun, displaying orange incendiary ammo. The turian, Garrus, reached for a sniper rifle, moving faster than Jack had thought possible for one to uncompress such a large weapon. What was most surprising was the way that Lynx began to glow, in much the same fashion as Jack was. She could have sworn he was pure soldier but the glow of biotics did not lie. More interestingly though was that Lynx raised a hand to give the order for his squad to stand down. Both squad mates hesitated, before Garrus compacted his rifle and sent the human a look. He scowled deeper than Jack had thought possible and put the shotgun back behind him.

Lynx's biotics settled in a barrier, coating his armour. Jack knew the signs of biotic battle, from years of abuse and fighting and she noticed that Lynx wasn't taking an offensive posture. Rather, his biotics flowed clumsily around him, the barrier defensive and strong but not well controlled. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, any hint of humour gone.

"I don't work for Cerberus, Jack. I use their ship, crew and resources but I don't take their orders and I never will, not after everything they have done. But something larger than my vendetta is coming and I need people like you to stop it. That's as straight up as I get and trust me when I tell you that when push comes to shove, Cerberus will never, ever come out on top when it comes to me."

Jack again paused. There was something about him, some sadness, some heavy burden that she could not place. His hatred of Cerberus was prevalent in his voice, in the bitterness, in the way he spat the word in as much of the same way as she did. She allowed herself to go into a strange temporary calm, only for a second, but long enough for her to realise that the man who stood before her was potentially damaged beyond what his scarred face would show.

"You want me to come with you, make it worth my while," she commented, letting herself relax slightly.

Lynx's expression went back to the same closed sardonic mask, something that made Jack want to punch him.

"You don't _have_ to bargain, although I'm willing to be coerced."

_Yep, definitely punch him. _

"I'll do what I can for you, ok?"

She fought the urge to scoff. She'd heard _that_ before. But in this case, there was something he could offer her.

"Don't make promises you can't keep. I bet your ship'ss got loads of Cerberus databases. I want to look at those files, see what Cerberus has on me."

Revenge would be sweet. Names, dates, locations. Places to nuke, people to kill.

"You want me on your team, let me go through those databases."

And there was also the potential of finding out who _exactly_ Lynx was and where he came from. She knew his last name was the same as some great Alliance hero, but beyond that, she needed to know more. Even just for the pure purpose of finding some way of beating him down before she killed him. Lynx's lips twisted and for a second, she thought he would refuse. Finally, he replied:

"I'll give you full access."

Jack's eyes narrowed.

"You'd better be straight up with me," she snarled.

"You told me you'd rip me apart if I wasn't, and as much as it doesn't seem that way, I do actually have to be doing things while, you know, being alive."

Lynx's constant sardonic retorts were going to get on her nerves, Jack could tell. She opened her mouth to tell him to get fucked when she saw him give a small nod to her. It was only a slight movement of the head but it was just as honest as he had been when he'd told her that he didn't work for Cerberus. Jack exhaled. The itch was coming back. Growling, she sneered at Lynx, who seemed to be the biggest thing pressing her impulse button. She needed to either fight or research the people she was going to kill, or she'd probably attack Lynx then and there.

"So why the hell are we standing here?" Jack snapped.

Lynx's lips twisted in amusement and he looked over his shoulder at Garrus. The other human just stared at Jack with the same expression of distaste and mistrust.

"What do you say, Garrus? Want to get off this station? Or did you want to go back and put a few more holes in Warden Kuril's corpse?"

Jack started. They killed Warden Kuril? Those bastards, she was saving his turian hide for herself! Before she could show her disapproval, Garrus responded.

"I think that last throw of yours was more than the poor man could take. Didn't his head get snapped at a ninety-degree angle?

Lynx chortled darkly and Jack was drawn to his laughter. Obviously, Lynx was quite at home with violence and would probably have no problem sleeping at night after the hard and gruesome fights.

_This might actually be a bit of fun,_ Jack thought. _Sucks I'm probably going to have to kill him at some point._

"Move out," Lynx commanded. "Before this ship really does go into Hell."

* * *

**A/N: Welcome to 'Null', my first ME:2 fanfic. It's been a while since I've written any fanlove, and I decided, for my return, that I should attempt something I'm quite familiar with. I'm just going to quickly jump onto a few complaints that might be nesting on your fingertips before we continue:**

**1. It is possible to be a sniper vanguard in the first game, if you play through a second time. **

**2. Yes, the scars shouldn't develop that quickly for Shepard, but Lynx is a bad bad man. Or something. Nah, he's kind of negative about everything, so let's play it down to his general cynicism and pessimism (creative license disclaimer *grins*).**

**3. I'm attempting to write the characters from how they'd respond to Lynx and how Jack might see them. I am willing to edit if it's all too OOC, and please tell me if it is, but since we're dealing with completely screwed-up kiddies, I guess we can put that back down to interpretaiton**

**4. Been a while since I've written any prose, so this might undergo edits. A lot of them. Bear with me, the prose got beaten out of me the minute I started scriptwriting for the stage *grins***

**Enough justification. Hope you enjoy 'Null' and please review. I'm hungry for an audience, adoring or despising.  
**


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